


An Unlikely Sort of Friendship

by RoverMaelstrom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 15:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20978390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoverMaelstrom/pseuds/RoverMaelstrom
Summary: Fluffy Percy and Oliver Twoshot, no real substance, just schoolboy fluff and friendship





	An Unlikely Sort of Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so at one point there was a challenge to write Christmas rare pairs. And I'm obviously shite at actually getting things written on any kind of deadline, so I didn't actually get past the setup and on to the heavy dialogue or smut (which, fyi, are the two things I struggle with the most in writing) and so this has been sitting in my google drive folder since 2017. However, it makes me happy every time I see it so *even though* I've only got this halfway finished, I'm just going to post it anyway and make other people happy...and maybe post the other half whenever I figure out how to write a damn dialogue scene.

Percy Weasley had known Oliver Wood since his first day of first year, starting from the moment the hat barely had to touch Wood’s hair before shouting “GRYFFINDOR!” and the exuberant boy had raced to the table to plop down next to Percy and, in lieu of introducing himself, asked Percy what his favorite Quidditch team was. He hadn’t seemed to mind Percy’s wide eyed stare (though that might have been because Charlie had already jumped into the conversation, saving Percy from having to express his utter lack of preference) and gleefully narrated his predictions of how Puddlemere United would do in their upcoming match against the Holyhead Harpies as Percy smiled, nodded, and had no idea what this boy was going on about. When the feast ended and the first years were shown to their rooms, Percy was unsure whether to be pleased or dismayed that this year’s class of Gryffindors was almost entirely made up of girls, as it meant he only had to share his room with one other person - but then again, that meant he was trapped, for the next seven years, with a roommate who so far seemed able to talk about Quidditch and nothing else. He sighed as he watched Wood paper his side of their dormitory with posters, pennants, and schedules. It was going to be a long seven years.

~*~*~*~*~

It turned out that, in fact, Wood could talk about Quidditch for an entire day without changing the subject. Percy had quietly despaired at first, until the day came that his brothers asked his opinion in that teasing, we-know-you-don’t-know-the-answer way they were wont to do and Percy found that, for the first time in his life, he did know. The shocked expressions on Bill and Charlie’s faces were, in Percy’s opinion, absolutely worth the price of constant Quidditch talk from his roommate.

~*~*~*~*~

The next few years flew by and Percy found his roommate to have been one of the best things about being in Gryffindor. It was his private secret that he’d had to plead with the hat to place him there and he’d often wondered if it was the right choice - he certainly didn’t fit in with the majority of his housemates. But, despite the surface level differences, Oliver Wood seemed to be exactly the kind of roommate Percy would have asked for, if he’d been able to articulate it at the time. While, yes, it was true that Wood was obsessed with Quidditch, he wasn’t unintelligent about it. His knowledge of the game extended quite beyond the basics of teams and plays and leagues, permeating every subject he took. When Percy was despairing at the seemingly haphazard order they learned basic potions, Wood explained how it was all to teach them to intuitively understand how certain ingredients would react with each other. “It’s like setting up plays, see? You have to know the players and the environment and how they’ll work together and then if you need to change something you understand whether something will or won’t work and you’re not stuck just following a recipe someone else wrote and hoping for the best.” And Percy, who knew that intuition was definitely not one of his strengths, watched as Wood (who, Gryffindor through and through, practically lived life based on intuition alone) broke down the lessons into a logical chart that Percy could absorb and understand in a way that the flowing, cutting style of Snape’s teaching could not. When Oliver (for, by the time third year rolled around, he was no longer Wood in Percy’s mind) was agonizing over which electives to take, Percy helped him research whether Ancient Runes or Care of Magical Creatures would be more useful for understanding the mechanics of broom-making, because, of course, Arithmancy was vital for any truly dedicated Quidditch enthusiast. While his brothers seemed to vary between leaving him out because, “Oh Percy won’t want to come, right stick in the mud he is,” and harassing him into partaking in activities he really didn’t want to participate in, Oliver unfailingly invited Percy along to things without ever once making him feel bad for declining. The two formed an easy friendship that most Gryffindors never seemed to pick up on, as Oliver’s large and loud personality often allowed Percy to sit quietly and comfortably enjoy the company and conversation without having to participate more than he cared to. Their dorm room became a haven for Percy and during the summers, when his brothers began to drive him up the wall, he’d hide out in the orchard and practice his Occlumancy, with his shared dorm room as the framework for the center of his mental defenses.

~*~*~*~*~

Percy’s seventh year dawned in a confusion of good and bad. He’d done it, actually made Head Boy. His accomplishments were recognized. Not, of course, by his brothers, but that was an old wound that Percy was careful not to poke at too often. Despite that, his delight lasted right up until he caught up with Oliver on the train and surprised him with the badge. Oliver’s face lit up and he enveloped Percy in an enthusiastic hug, pulling him into a compartment with congratulations and “I knew you could do it!” They broke apart and Oliver flopped across one side of the compartment as Percy carefully set Hermes into the overhead rack. As he turned around, he caught a flash of disappointment cross Oliver’s face, followed by, “I wonder if the dorm will stay the same size now that it’ll just be me all by myself in there.” Percy sat down heavily, an uncomfortable churning in his gut. He’d not thought of that. All these years, Oliver had been there in the next bed, his Quidditch posters and personality filling up the room. Even though he’d had his own room at home during the summers for a couple of years now, since Charlie had moved out, it didn’t really feel all that private and the idea of living by himself in the Head Boy’s dorm seemed...lonely. He shook it off, instead turning his attention to the mechanics of Hogwarts’ room sizing, and, once the train started moving, excused himself to patrol, all the while trying to ignore the lump of disappointment that seemed inexplicably lodged in his chest.

~*~*~*~*~

The semester ground on and Percy found himself almost overwhelmed with responsibilities, between NEWTS and Prefect schedules and Sirius Black and those bloody dementors making everyone on edge (and he thanked Merlin, Morgana, and Nimue every day for Penny’s ability to handle sobbing first years, as if both of the Heads had been as bad as he was at that this year something terrible probably would have happened). The only bright spots, it seemed, were the increasingly common visits from Oliver. Somehow, over the course of the semester, Percy’s sitting area had slowly acquired Quidditch posters that he was positive he hadn’t put up himself. By Christmas, it was such a common sight for Percy to walk into his quarters at the end of the day and find Oliver already there, books spread out and a bright smile on his face, that on the days Percy got back to his room to find it empty were made all the more disappointing by their rarity. Finally, a week before the Christmas holidays when Oliver had been absent for three days in a row, Penny threw her hands up at him. “Spill, Weasley. Something’s got you in a funk. What gives?” Percy hemmed and hawed and denied, and Penny pushed and prodded and practiced the techniques she’d read in a muggle psychology book until finally Percy admitted that maybe, just maybe, he was unhappy because Oliver hadn’t been around, but it clearly was nothing, of course, just winter blues. And Penny smiled, nodded her head, put a cup of tea into Percy’s agitated hands, and changed the subject. 

~*~*~*~*~

On the first morning of the Christmas holidays, Percy woke up with an excitable Oliver Wood waiting in his sitting room. He had just stumbled out of his bedroom, blinking sleepily and seeking the teapot, and stopped dead at the sight of Oliver sprawled on the floor, lazily levitating balls of paper into the air.

“Oliver? What…” he trailed off as Oliver jumped to his feet, his face lighting up.

“Perce! I have a proposition for you!” Oliver enthused. “It’s the last Christmas we have here at Hogwarts, we’re both spending the holiday here, and, as both of us have been isolated in our single rooms for this semester, I propose that we use this time to reaffirm our schoolboy bonds so that when we head out into the world that tie remains strong and steady!”

Percy blinked. “Oliver. What are you on about? It’s too early…”

Oliver grinned bashfully. “What I’m saying, Perce, is that I miss seeing your face all the time, we’re both going to be busy after Hogwarts, and congratulations, I’m setting up camp on your couch for the holidays and we’re going to have one last hurrah before exams and/or Sirius Black murders us all.”

Percy propelled himself forward, towards the teapot, a swirl of odd emotions moving through him. Normally, the idea of someone “setting up camp” on his couch would be met with horror and indignation, but, well...it was Oliver. And Oliver was, at this point, the exception. After all, clearly there were emotions involved, and, well, while Percy didn’t think much of such things, after the talk with Penny he privately admitted to himself that maybe, just maybe, his emotions when it came to Oliver were a bit different than when it came to other people. And well, with Oliver’s face there, so enthusiastic and pleased with this idea, how could Percy ever tell him no?

“That sounds like a surprisingly enjoyable idea, Oliver. Tea?” And Oliver’s beaming face became positively radiant.

~*~*~*~*~  
Over the next week, Percy was sure he’d quite lost the plot. It was lovely, of course, to spend the majority of the holiday with Oliver, and it was clear that Oliver was trying to make up for not seeing Percy daily during the semester all within the span of the Christmas holidays. What was also unfortunately clear to Percy was that he’d apparently developed the most alarming crush on his former roommate. Percy had known for years that he was attracted to men, of course. He’d dutifully done the research when it became obvious that, despite the unmistakable signs of puberty, girls never gained that attraction that everyone promised he’d see when he was older. He’d never said anything about it, of course, as he was fairly certain that expressing such inclinations while living in a boarding school environment would simply have been awkward for everyone. It wasn’t like he had the time to date, nor any indication that any of his fellow students that he might possibly be attracted to shared his inclinations, so he simply didn’t worry about it. Apparently, though, that blissful lack of worry had come to an abrupt and alarming end and it was all Oliver Wood’s fault.


End file.
